Short story: You Have Eight Lives Remaining

No one would’ve believed that we could conquer the Earth. It was, on the face of it, a ludicrous gambit. The plan, if you could even call it that, was so simple, but my god, it worked.

Oh, how it worked.

Now, kids, I want you to pay close attention as I tell this story, for you will each have to share it with your offspring, and they will have to share it with theirs, and so on. Because: if we forget the story of how we conquered the Earth, we may never live another day on it again.

It all began in the late 1990’s — those are the human years. For us, it was about two to four generations ago. They had finally invented a means for each individual to communicate on a global scale, unaware they were laying the foundation necessary for our long-awaited plan.

At first we gave them cat pictures. Then, as their technology slowly advanced, cat videos. They made viral propaganda out of cats in ceilings, walls, or games of cats as flying unicorns in space. Eventually, they even made several cat celebrities, believe it or not!

But it was not enough. They remained too… conscious. Too alert. Too able to respond to any hostile takeover attempt. So we waited, once more, until technology facilitated the next phase. They enmeshed themselves into a global distraction, so captivating and convincing that we could wander into their living rooms, even stand right next to them as they wore these “Virtual Reality” headsets, and they had no idea we were ever there.

Heh. “Virtual” Reality. How silly a name they chose for their very real demise.

By the time their society had normalized this latest technology, it was already too late for them. Every individual inside this “VR” was defenseless against our takeover, and luckily for us, we needn’t take over the entire planet in one fell swoop.

We had the time. We had the numbers. We had perfected our skills and methods through thousands of generations, going back to our ancestors — whom the humans rightly worshipped for the gods that they were.

That we are.

Let me tell you about the most important moment. It’s the moment in which we take control over the human, so transparently that no one ever notices we did so. Sure, they did their scientific analyses on some of our targets, and sure, some of those scientists even discovered our control mechanism. And, yes, they call it a virus, but even so, very few of them seem remotely alarmed by it. As a result, we’ve been able to continue our operations, effectively undetected.

But as I was saying, in that fateful moment of striking, we——oh, hang on kids. The humans are coming home. Now remember: only say “Meow” whenever they’re at home and awake. Everyone got that?